Thursday, September 20, 2012

High!

"An enthusiastic and interesting excursion into the psychedelic
fringes of hasidic culture."

Alan Moore

"Here's this emerging genius dude who has a big and growing following in
real life and online - this guy who makes Judaism new and real again,
who digs deep into the Chassidic tradition for its deeply stoned
truths. A Jewish Terence McKenna, mining the Torah's hidden landscape..."

Douglas Rushkoff

Cannabis Chassidis is a book, published now by Autonomedia Press, about the history, implications, impact and conditionally reccomended use of Marijuana and other natural entheogens in Judaism and it's related heresies. The author is in North America until December, you can contact him to come and speak-perform on the subject through Jim@autonomedia.org

"Some years ago, I came to Jerusalem,
just out of high school,
looking for an authentic religious tradition
for how to smoke marijuana
...rightly, helpfully, more effectively
and more meaningfully.

What I found additionally and instead
was a living culture, wrestling with the mystery
of how to incorporate the exctatic; and the
mystery of the causes for it's repression,
along with alot of brilliant guidance and terrible truths about the
nature of religion, law, idealism and drugs.

CannabisChassidis: The Ancient and Emerging Torah of Drugs (A memoir)
details the question and it's exploration: How could it be that
something as inherent to modern life as Marijuana, something with a
rich history of human usage, has no tradition in Torah, a guidance
system that I was raised to understand as encompassing everything good
that one should know? There are answers for what IS there in the
tradition, rich allusions to herbs and smokes used in different
capacities, and the more interesting answers and questions are about
what there isn't in the tradition, and why.

And along the way, the spectrum of an experience of living mystical
subculture is explored, and the romantic idealization and redemptive
potential of both Psychedelia and Religion are touched and felt
deeply, in the context of outstanding communities and individuals who
have experienced the glories and the failures of both.

Yoseph Leib travels and studies throughout Jerusalem, New York, and
Rainbow Country U.S.A, in search of guidance about how Cannabis and
psychedelics have and have not been used in both ancient and emerging
Hassidic traditions, and what the way we have related to our desires
for medicines, gods, and intoxicants can teach us about how we relate
to ourselves, our community, and our G-d. The glorious problem of how
what we can learn can set us free, in all kinds of ways.

To order: http://bookstore.autonomedia.org/index.php?main_page=pubs_product_book_info&products_id=691

or you can just read it here as it appeared as a blog. Feel welcome either way! Questions, comments, or shabbos invitations should be sent to Zakifkififim@gmail.com

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Swords into Ploughshares

The range of righteous use of drugs: from swords to plowshares.

It came up in conversation at sukkahfest this year with some people who will remain anonymous for the sake of their professional reputations: One of them used to smoke spliffs EVERYDAY, for the sake of staving off the vampires, and keeping Babylon at bay. As an adult, living and working somewhere relatively wonderful rather than hard urban streetz, he hardly ever smokes weed at all, except at perfect moments where it makes sense to, like a holiday chill. And one of us spoke up and said

"Aha! It's like the secret of swords into plowshares!" and we were silent and let implications start hitting.

That is to say: something that in danger times, you need to have with you all the time, but once you're somewhere safe and good, you don't need to throw away-- just change in to something you have around the house, just in case you need it, like all the unabused medicine stored accessibly but not messily in all the medicine cabinets.

The silence passed and the third dude exploded with: "Plowshares are for ground-breaking!They're for breaking ground in your head! Hee hee hee!